Willie Cochran

Lee Hogan's carryout soul food restaurant could someday be just a brief walk from the Obama presidential library.

It is good news, she said, that the library and museum could come to Washington Park, bringing a projected $600 million in economic development to an impoverished neighborhood that has long been overlooked.

But in a half-century in the restaurant business on the South Side, the 70-year-old entrepreneur has learned not to pay much attention to promises. Even if revitalization comes, she isn't sure she will be a part of it.

"For 17 years, this restaurant has been 98 percent of my life," said Hogan, who was a waitress at the long-closed Gladys'...

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Lee Hogan's carryout soul food restaurant could someday be just a brief walk from the Obama presidential library.
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